BLOC 2010: the season opener…

April 10, 2010 > Featured, Reviews

The thing about Bloc is, it’s not like the other festival. Firstly, it’s in March (so could perhaps claim to be the opening ceremony of the festival season). Then there’s its location- Butlins holiday camp in Minehead- complete with chalets, pubs and restaurants, amusement arcades, even a water park. It’s all under-cover and the music rarely stops.

So it’s good. Very good.

This years line-up celebrated dubstep’s arrival as a truly global, over-ground phenomenon- reminding us of the music that has shaped its sound- hip-hop, dub, reggae and drum and bass, and highlighting the innovation and experimentation being spawned by its influence. Back to back sets from Kode9 + Martyn, Skream + Benga and Marcel Dettmann + Shed, plus outstanding displays presented by FWD/Rinse, Subloaded and 16 bit emphasised the glory of this genre so rife in Bristol.

For us, the big draw on Friday was Joy Orbison. His single ‘Hyph Myngo’ one of the tracks of last year and it was clear from the heaving arena that we weren’t the only people who’d fallen for his hypnotic brand of funky 2-step. His mixing wasn’t great at times but he played enough of his own stuff, and some classic 2-step, to satisfy an eager crowd. Earlier Nathan Fake had started the evening beautifully and we finished the night off with a bit of dub-techno from the legend, Ellen Allien.

Saturday’s highlights were two very different artists. I never thought I’d have the chance to see Salt’n'Pepa live, but here they were, mid-forties, still ‘pushing it’ as well as ever. There was something ever so slightly cheesy about their show but it was utterly, utterly uplifting and a perfect warm-up for the night ahead. The other highlight was Luke Vibert. He played an incredibly intricate and diverse set, all tinged with his famous acid madness, and punctuated with a hypnotic laser show. Also not to go unmentioned was the heightened aural experience of Autechre. They played in complete darkness so as to further infiltrate our eardrums with their obscure yet thumping sounds. Mmm mmmm.

So we danced, and smoked, tea-drank, dominoed and BlocTV’d the night away. Incidentally, BlocTV is the most deranged thing I’ve ever seen…becoming stranger and more twisted the longer you watch it. It’s impossible to articulate how bizarre it is.

Alas we couldn’t stay for Sunday night’s extravaganza but Sunday was all about the day. We were ready. It was the moment we’d been waiting for. So we marched off in our charity shop swimming cossies and went to the water park. Lazy rivers, slides in pitch black, wave machines- the weirdest but best way to wash away the previous 48 hours of sin (and possibly the most dangerous!). Perfect.

And then home.

Bloc has got everything- great music, a wonderful crowd -dense with Irish fun-finders over just for the weekend because they ‘love the crack’, baths, beds, garden picnics, bowling alleys, a games arcade, lazy walks along the beach to the quaint shops and cafes of Minehead …aaaand a wave machine(!!). Next year cannot come soon enough. But first, where’s those wellies and tent?

Bloc craziness